Spending fifty years under maximum military and civilian dictatorships can be an instructive
though nasty experience. During these painful five decades, I came to know that the ultimate
insult dictatorships serve is the assumption that force can silence any opposition.

In both, harsh abuses and harrowing indignities frequently and intensely regulated everyday life.

Truncheons, teargas, hot water and pepper spray, tasers and live ammunitions were modes of
persuasion favored by the state against protesters. Anyone who lifted a finger against scalping
abuses such as violation of rights and brazen embezzlement of public funds was a marked state
enemy.

The social contract between the government and its citizens not worth the paper and the ink it
was printed was stonily ignored. In this inky, fetid atmosphere, life was of cheap and low
quality. It also was a contradiction, for arch-villains were celebrated as leaders, while those who
had meaningful contributions to make to social progress were degraded, jailed and killed.

Those who dared to ask questions critical to the health of society were not seen as intellectuals
but rather, maligned by government as "miscreant elements and troublemakers." To be thus
profiled meant soldiers and the police were at liberty to use such individuals for target practice
and to waste them.

Those most exposed to such abuses were high school and college students and university
professors. Others such as government workers with a backlog of unpaid salaries, market
women, unionists and the general public when restive, also received a good dose of jack-booting.
Irate government agents high on absolute power routinely visited state terror on anyone
suspected of subversion.

To this day I carry imprints of military boots viciously stamped on my feet by state agents.
During one of the regular strikes by college professors against state neglect of education, one
such agent was irate because I had the nerve to ask why he was so brutal. He threatened that he
would not only "rearrange" my dental formula but teach me a lesson I should never forget for
life.

Perhaps if I had the presence of mind to think of the rolling relevance of William Makepeace
Thackeray's counsel that "To endure is greater than to dare," I wouldn't have been so impetuous.

For when I made the mistake of daring the brute, he instantly made good his fiery threat. A
deftly thrown uppercut shattered my molars, while a combination of punches cracked my
incisors. Later in the United States, doctors and dentists would examine the abused parts of my
body and take pictures of the troubles I have seen!

My dentist warned that I should avoid biting things even as soft as apples if I did not want my
incisors to come unstuck from my gums. To get round the problem, I was counseled to cut apples
into tiny manageable pieces before chewing them. Not wanting to take chances, I frequently use
my tongue to pass on to other teeth most stuff that my incisors ordinarily could have taken care
of.

In another attack, I was kicked so hard in the midsection that I have a scar that is certain to last a
lifetime. In addition, I have a pulverized knuckle on my right palm as a souvenir to constantly
remind me that in a dictatorship I need to keep my opinions to myself. The cold comfort I get
when the palm hurts is that the physical beatings I have received are enough to last me several
lifetimes and so I now stay out of trouble best as I can.

The effect of these intimidations is an unsettling feeling whenever I see anyone carrying an
assault rifle or wearing military boots. Though I have come to learn to live with the past, yet I
am occasionally overwhelmed as I involuntarily remember the abuses or hear stories of other
victims.

One day I met a Nigerian my age now living in the United States. He too had lived through the
searing political turmoil before migrating to the States. In the course of our conversation, he
recalled an experience that forced him to betray the abuses he had lived with back home.

He had secured three jobs here. He needed the money to send home to pay the school fees of his
siblings, support his aging parents and of course, pay his bills here. So for days he would go
without sleep to work and meet his commitments.

One day on his way back home, he was stopped by a police officer who mistook his drowsy
driving for driving under the influence of alcohol. When he noticed the flashing blue light he
was so hit by a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach he almost smashed into a power line
pole. When he managed to stop, he jumped out of the car and fell to the ground with his hands
stretched out.

Getting to him, the puzzled officer ordered my friend back to the car. He then asked my visibly
shaking friend what he had been drinking. My friend replied he didn't make enough money to
afford such luxury.

Asked why he jumped out of his car, my friend explained that it was a life-and-death matter in
his country for anyone stopped by the police in a siren-blaring and light-flashing car.

Afraid that his car might be sprayed with bullets, he further explained, he jumped out for cover.
To prove to his pursuer he was unarmed, he lay prone on the ground. Without the telltale stench
of alcohol on him, the officer found the explanation of his situation credible.

What shocked the formerly drowsy but now fully awake man was that unlike home he was not
asked for any bribe. Rather, and to his profound relief, the officer offered to escort him home so
he could take a rest!

Using an Igbo proverb, I assured my friend that, "Anyone on whom God bestows a crown cannot
lose it to mere mortals."

Although I was amused at the drama he narrated, I also came to realize how protracted brutality
can sap the self-confidence of its victims. Those whose lives have been smothered by a
dictatorship know that living in it is like an impossible nightmare from which it is difficult to
awake. Graces taken for granted under democracies are matters of grievous struggle under the
crushing weight of dictatorships.

However, since one is in mortality to be tested and proven, surviving the chastening
circumstances of tyranny can be a learning experience depending on the choices one makes
amidst impossible alternatives.

Imo Ben Eshiet was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Raised in his village, Uruk Enung, and at
several cities in his country including Nsukka, Enugu, Umuahia, Eket and Calabar, Eshiet is a
detribalized Nigerian. Although he was extensively exposed to Western education right from
childhood in his country where he obtained a PhD in English and Literary Studies from the
University of Calabar, he is well nurtured in African history, politics, culture and traditions.

Imo is currently a teacher in the high priests group in the Summit Ward of the Greensboro North
Carolina Stake.